Chapter 5. Pygame and 3D

In our previous chapters, we developed our 2D games with Python modules that are built on top of a graphical user interface library, such as Tkinter and Pyglet. This allowed us to start coding our games without worrying about the lower-level details.

Now we will develop our first 3D game with Python, which will require an understanding of some basic principles of OpenGL, a popular multiplatform API for building 2D and 3D applications. You will learn how to integrate these programs with Pygame, a Python library commonly used to create sprite-based games.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• A steady approach to PyOpenGL and Pygame
• Initializing an OpenGL context
• Understanding the different modes that can be enabled with OpenGL
• How to render lights and simple shapes
• Integrating OpenGL with Pygame
• Drawing primitives and performance improvements